* Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has announced that the unemployment rate stood at 8.5% in the February-April rolling quarter, up slightly on the 8.4% unemployment rate recorded from November-January but down from 10.5% in the same quarter in 2022. Meanwhile, the underemployment rate was 18.4%, down from 18.7% in November-January and down from 22.5% in the same quarter in 2022. According to Brazil’s labour ministry, a net total of 180,005 jobs were created in April, resulting from 1.865m job creations and 1.685m job losses.